A stick in time:
After quickly turn
ing a sapling into a
shovel handle, one
firefighter attacks
with sand while
another beats the
flame with birch
branches. If smoke
jumpers kill a fire
quickly, it adds
a bonus to their
monthly hundred
dollar pay.
accidents, and one by lightning. Valeriy and
Vladimir both tell me stories of parachuting
fatalities, one when a jumper landed in water
and drowned, another when a jumper hit an
electric line. But jumping is the thrill that gets
them hooked. "Two
minutes fly like eagle,
three days dig like
mole,"
Valeriy says
of the smokejumper's
life-and the flying's
worth the digging.
The day is late, so
after making a couple hundred feet of fire line
the guys break for a smoke. Everyone smokes
unfiltered Primas-loosely rolled butts that
cost about a nickel a pack and make health
conscious chain-smokers like Valeriy shudder.
As we swap Russian and English swear words
and laugh, Alexi Tishin, an earnest 28-year-old
with a week of stubble and a smattering of gold
teeth, says, "This is the best job for tough
guys"-you get to jump out of planes, fight
fires, live in the forest. He says he especially
loves jumping to small fires and trying to put
them out fast. If they kill the fire in a day or
two, they get a few extra dollars each-no
small sum, given that smokejumpers earn on
average 3,100 rubles, about a hundred dollars,
a month. The incentive seems to work: More
than half of all fires are put out within two days.
T HE SMOKEJUMPERS are true woods
men-hunting, fishing, and trapping
sable in the off-season to make ends meet,
as nimble with an ax and knife as they are with
their hands. When they land at a fire and make
camp, they don't just make tent poles and
shovel handles from saplings, they make tables,
benches, shelves-you name it. I'm amazed to see one guy make a
watertight mug out of birch bark.
It's a good thing their outdoor skills are solid, because their equip
ment often isn't. When we return from the fire line, Valeriy discovers that
one of his brand-new experimental smokejumper boots has melted. The
rubber sole is a mash of black goo. His boots lasted "an hour, at best" he
says angrily, before launching into a torrent of complaint about poor
Russian equipment. "This tent like from Second World War," he says,
pointing at the canvas tent that will welcome mosquitoes and rain into
our lives for days to come. The tents have no mosquito netting, the chain
saws are heavy and unwieldy, the backpacks have no waist straps, the
pull-on boots are made of cheap synthetic leather (and feet must be
wrapped in towels to make them fit), the clothing is neither fire retar
dant nor water resistant. And everything is heavy.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, AUGUST 2002